The Caravan

We are moving into the last days before our political Armageddon or Deliverance, alternate outcomes that will become clear perhaps as soon as the early hours of November 7. Trump is poking his base with a stick and wooing the undecideds with fear and loathing of an immigrant invasion. He is not only doing this in his carefully screened rallies but in TV ads featuring a migrant who killed two policemen using an AR-15 assault rifle. That ad reminds many of us over 50 of Ol’ Willie Horton (the attack ad by George the 1st that knocked out Mike Dukakis in ‘88). Willie’s story is true, but the one Trump is peddling ain’t: Luis Bracamontes was deported by Clinton in ’97 and W in ’01 but got in again and married a US citizen in ’02. He stayed here until his crime and was sentenced to stay here for life. Trump’s ad blames the Democrats without mentioning W, nor Republican opposition to any restrictions on military rifles .

Trump lies are no surprise; the Washington Post just registered Trump’s false statement # 6,420 since his inauguration (as of November 1, sorry, I did not note the time of that day.) This post will set out several more nuggets in his Caravan of Lies using charts borrowed from the Washington Post.

I have previously mentioned my admiration for WaPo, but if you missed it this is a superb on-line newspaper which you can have delivered to your laptop for one dollar the first month. After that it’s $10 a month, but an annual subscription goes for only $100, which they will offer you several times. After enough “No thank you’s” their offer falls to $50 and there you must pounce! Okay, they pay me to advertise their fine newspaper (sports and cooking are good too) but, full disclosure here, they pay me in facts, well reasoned opinions, and sometimes wisdom. Joe Bob says “Check it out for a month.”

Trump is sending troops to guard the border, and while MP’s would be my choice, they have real work to do on their bases, so he’s sending infantry. I have a faded old diploma in Infantry and what we majored in is how to kill people with a minor in how to not get killed while doing it. There are no classes on riot control or how to challenge unruly civilians. The caravan is largely unarmed (those Middle Easterners said to be among them could be carrying AK-47s and grenades) and we all hope no shots are fired. But when troops have live ammo, anything can happen. That’s why that after the 1970 Kent State shootings National Guardsmen on riot duty carry rifles and bayonets, but no live rounds.

Here’s WaPo’s year by year graph of illegals caught and turned back. Despite spending more money, we aren’t catching nearly so many as in prior years. That could mean far fewer are trying to get in, yes?

Furthermore the illegal immigrant population is declining.

Two thirds of our undocumented immigrants have been here more than ten years.

These are people who work our fields, prepare livestock for market, and cook those lovely chalupas and enchiladas in your favorito Mexican restaurant, while almost always paying taxes via withholding.

This chart shows the biggest border state’s criminal convictions of US citizens along with those of both kinds of immigrants, legal and otherwise. If Mexico is sending us their criminals then the average crime rate is declining on both sides of the border. Cogitate on that. And don’t tell me Texas is more dangerous than New Orleans or Chicago.

Come to think of it, I’m more worried about Trump and his wholly-owned subsidiary the GOP Congress than the caravan. Nobody in the caravan has the power, or has expressed a desire, to ruin SS, Medicare, and Obamacare.

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7 thoughts on “The Caravan”

Thank you for this important post. The last bar chart is stunning. When looking at the actual statistics here one notes that the vitriol that comes out of this man’s mouth bends and shapes and stokes the fear-mongering attitudes in ways completely unrelated to the facts. Today, he said members of the U.S. military sent to the southern border to keep out thousands in a migrant caravan would “fight back” if immigrants throw stones and suggested soldiers might open fire on the group because there’s “not much difference” between a rock or gun. Really.

Not much difference between a rock and a gun begs the question of what the assault at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February would have looked like if the attacker had been armed with a bunch of rocks instead of an assault rifle? Would he have killed 17 people and injured 17 others in a matter of minutes with rocks?

This is a completely ridiculous comparison but it serves to once again, stoke the fire of hatred.

My mother grew up Baptist. Dad was Methodist. She went to a few services in his church and soon converted. A decade later I asked her Why?

She told me “Well, fire and brimstone isn’t what I want to hear on a day off. And Methodists will tell you “Prayer is good for the soul, but if you’re fishing in the middle of Caddo Lake and fall out of the boat, it’s better to swim back to the boat focusing on your rhythm breathing than to just try to float while praying to survive. Sometimes we have to look out for ourselves and later thank the Lord for giving us sufficient strength.”

I dunno what that means exactly, but approximately translated, she would say Prayer works better along active participation in Plan B. In this case, Plan B might be phone calls to like minded friends, volunteer in your precinct to drive people to the polls, and if they’ll have you (Hillary’s campaign would not let me make calls in 2016 … too old? Victory assured without more help?) make some phone calls to likely Demo voters, a list of which should be available from any of the campaigns of candidates in the higher value elections you can vote in. I made calls from home for the Obama for Change campaign in 2008 and I’ve never had so much fun ‘working’ in my life.